Yesterday we received the birth certificate of Val’s great great grandmother, Mary Nevard Morton (1843-1918), which revealed that her mother’s maiden name was Elizabeth Nevard.We had long had Mary Nevard Morton’s marriage certificate, which showed that she married August Decker at St Botolph’s Church in Colchester, Essex in 1856. The marriage certificate did not give her age, but merely described her as a “minor”, so we applied for her birth certificate in the period 1837-1840, and it was not found, so we assumed she had been married before the beginning of secular registration in 1837 — after all, she would still have been a minor if she had married in 1836. It was only finding her in the 1851 census that revealed just how minor she was — she married at 13 — and so enabled us to ask for the birth certificate in 1843.

So now, of course, we are looking for Elizabeth Nevard’s parents. According to the census she was born in Boxted, Essex, in about 1806, so we’ll be looking for a baptism record for her around then.